Geithner for Pirate Captain

Word is out that President-elect Barack Obama will nominate Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy J. Geithner for Secretary of the Treasury. With stocks rising nearly 500 points, Wall Street seems to be welcoming the news. So color me suspicious.

Geithner was a deputy under Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, a right-wing deregulationist. Geithner himself has been at the heart of the big bank bailout, engineering the rescue of Bear Sterns for which the US taxpayers are out $29 Billion.

Three Blind Mice
By KAREN TUMULTY AND MASSIMO CALABRESI

The largest government bailout in U.S. history was born before dawn on Sept. 17, when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke woke up at 6 a.m., checked his BlackBerry and saw the very thing he had dreaded: the futures market in free fall. Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and New York Fed president Timothy Geithner had spent the past year staving off one disaster after another, for the most part working behind the scenes. Earlier in the month, they had let investment bank Lehman Brothers slide into oblivion and then ushered another, Merrill Lynch, into the arms of Bank of America. Just the night before, the trio had wrapped up a deal to rescue insurance giant American International Group and gone to bed praying it would halt the panic and worrying it wouldn't. It didn't. [Time: More...]

This is not the change I was hoping for...

Hold off on Holder

Word is out today that President-elect Barack Obama plans to nominate Clinton era Deputy AG Eric Holder to the top spot in the Justice Department. This is not the change we were looking for.

Holder, the highest ranking Africa-American in the DOJ, served admirably under Bill Clinton. But he sullied his legacy with his involvement in Clinton's midnight pardon of white-collar corporate crook, Marc Rich, whose wife had bribed the Democratic Party in order to secure the pardon (which came just hours before George W. Bush assumed office in the stolen election of 2000.

Eric Holder lied* before Congress when he testified that he had first heard of the plan to pardon Rich (who was a fugitive at the time) late in November 2000. Email has since come to light which indicate Eric Holder was approached for the quid pro quo pardon eas early as February 2000.

[Holder] contends he knew little about the Rich case, and would have opposed a pardon application if it had come across his desk.But former White House Counsel Beth Nolan, as well as Clinton, have said that Holder leaned in favor of the pardon. Nolan and the rest of Clinton's legal team opposed it. Also, Justice's pardon attorney Roger Adams has testified that Holder knew that Rich was a fugitive before he did, and yet Holder didn't tell Adams. (WorldNetDaily: More...)

Now more than ever, America needs a leader in the Department of Justice free of the taint of corruption.

*I'm not a lawyer, and i don't pretend to play one on this blog. So i suppose i should include this disclaimer that these are mere my opinions that Marc Holder is lying. It could be he's simply incompetent (although i doubt that... Seems like he came through for this one big spender).

Goldman Sachs Golden Boy

Two years ago, he was a VP at Goldman Sachs. Then his old boss, the former GS CEO, brought him to DC. Now Neel Kashkari (as in "cash and carry") is the big kahuna in charge of doling out Bush's bailout. Priceless.

Obey me.	On Tuesday Neel Kashkari, 35, an assistant secretary of the Treasury, was named interim head of the Office of Financial Stability by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The office will run the $700 billion financial bailout program signed into law Friday. [More...]

MBA kills family, self as stocks tumble

Even his gated community wasn't able to shelter this unemployed financial advisor. Previously of PricewaterhouseCoopers and Sony Pictures, he had been out of work for months. He shot to death his mother-in-law, his wife and their three children (ages, 7, 12 and 19) before killing himself in the McMansion development of Sorrento Pointe. [More...]

The Dow dropped below 10,000 for the first time in four years.
But losses are pared in half after Dow drop reaches 800 points on credit crisis.

By Alexandra Twin, CNNMoney.com senior writer Last Updated: October 6, 2008: 4:13 PM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks plunged Monday, with the Dow down as much as 800 points during the session, as the $700 billion bank bailout plan and European government attempts to prop up faltering banks failed to comfort panicky investors. [More...]

US to produce propaganda for Iraqi TV

While Congress was distracted handing over $700 Billion to former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson, this mere million dollar waste went unnoticed.

U.S. to Fund Pro-American Publicity in Iraqi Media By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, October 3, 2008; Page A01 The Defense Department will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to "engage and inspire" the local population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government. [More...]

Market tanks as rescue plan passes

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Wall Street ended its worst week in seven years with another tumble on Friday on fears that the $700 billion financial rescue package may not unblock credit markets and stave off a U.S. recession. [more...]

Blum and Gloom LXIII

[Week 62 / Week 63 / Week 64]

[video h/t Joe Anybody]